Coober Pedy is around 1000kms north of Adelaide, pretty much in the middle of nowhere. This is true desert country and the town is an interesting if cosmetically challenged place to visit.

Home movies

I was there to shoot for a docco on Alzeimers and how it affects the Aboriginal population (far worse than mainstream). I took my small Canon HV30 along and the purpose of this video is just to show basic home movie techniques - at least how I do it!

Flying high

One thing I usually do when travelling is shoot a few pics from the air. This covers the getting there bit and you can get some pretty reasonable stuff from the window seat. The trick is to hold it steady, no movement, and let the scenery glide by the lens. From 35,000 feet you get an impressive look across Australia's huge landscape.

Heading north to Coober Pedy on a regional airline gets you a lower altitude which is very cool (mind you it's also bloody expensive at $670!). At around 25,000 feet you can pick off some detail and the camera can be zoomed in a long way. You're stuck with the dust and distortion of the window of course, which will lose you some detail, but even so it's always worth a shot.

On the ground

Anywhere I go I will shoot off location pics, both video and still. Every town has something to offer the happy snapper and Coober Pedy has the unique landscape of the opal mines and a surprise bonus of extensive junk yards! I deliberately avoided the tourist bits - we're saving those for a later family camping trip up north. Also I did not set out to create a masterpiece - just to grab what was there with the HV30 and see what I could get. The tripod is a necessity and that's clear from the obvious hand held shots - you can pick those even though I try hard to lean against a fixed object when shooting hand held.

I did use the HV30's excellent manual controls to get decent exposure and at home crushed the blacks a tad to get a better contrast but that's all in the magic department. To give it a quick "film" look I simply added a bit of black to the top and bottom to get the letterbox effect. It's interesting to see the letterbox look back again. When we all went widescreen it disappeared but has made a return on everything from rock clips to sport. Cinema screens are wider than wide screen TV so the letterbox creates the illusion of that wider screen and therefore gets an additional "film" look to it. Output as progressive 1080p and that's done (but obviously not a true film look).

Using photos

The opening bit I did using photoshop just for fun really. It took about an hour to make including a fair bit of messing around. Again it's not meant to be anything other than a simple way to start a home movie. I took some stills I had shot and added a white border to each. A white border still says "this is a photograph and not a video frame" to the viewer. Not sure why that still works as hardly anyone prints with a border any more (I do).

Then I made a simple background with two shades of brown and the clouds filter applied. Add a light effect and then paste the photos on top. Ohh and it's a massive 12,000 pixels wide! I was pretty impressed with my pc's ability to handle a multi-layered 500mb file with ease.

Once the pics are nicely placed it's saved as a huge jpeg and imported to Premiere. This is where I found out that CS3 will not take a still that big. It ended up as 6000 pixels wide. As the HD edit is 1440x1080 that leaves plenty of room to animate around it using the motion control. Just be careful to not let the edges show as you move around it.

The title pic is just a panoramic made from four individual photos - easy to do and then just keyed over the background.

Timing...

All up around four hours to put together and I did it for no reason other than a quick and painless way to show family/friends where I had been that week and it was fun to do. The HV30 HDV tape camera has been replaced by the HV40. Hope to get a test drive soon to see what the difference is. It will probably be the last HDV domestic camera Canon make.

Now back to work stuff!!!

By Steve Turner

I started in TV as a videotape operator for Channel Nine in 1980 and went to News editing in 1984, becoming Senior News editor for Nine Adelaide.

In 1988 moved to production editing (doing everything from sport to station promotions and programs) and then in 1989 moved to London to work for Sky News UK. This was just starting up and I helped set up the news editing operation.

The highlight of this year was covering the fall of the Berlin wall (where I location produced and edited continuously for five straight days and nights - grabbing sleep here and there). The best bit was interviewing people crossing the wall for the first time in years.

I returned to Adelaide in 1990 and freelance vision switched and also did graphics for news and production. Left again in 1991 to backpack the planet for 12 months with my partner Rochelle.

Back in 1992 and returned to production editing and graphic design for Channel Nine. I worked on all the Adelaide Formula One races (1985-1995) bar 2 (while away) doing foreign broadcast editing - packages for overseas networks in their languages.

Began Directing news in 1997 and started my own production business doing weddings and corporate work. This was followed quickly by producing science films for Flinders University and the setting up of our web business selling science related videos, CDroms, and now DVDs.

Started writing for Australian Video Camera in 2003 then Auscam when it started. Produced and shot news features for the Ten network and worked freelance on the Athen's Olympics in 2004 for Seven.

Left Channel Nine to join Channel Seven in 2005. Involved in the setup and operation of Seven's new news operation and regularly direct the six o'clock news. Directed and produced Seven's Anzac day telecasts for 2005/6 and independently produced the 13 part series "Fishing and Boating" for Channel Seven.

Produced and shot a documentary on drug abuse with an Indigenous Elders group as well as a two part docco with the RAAF. Current project include a docco on Alzheimers and another on the lives of siblings of disabled people.

I have three gorgeous small children and am a part time stay at home Dad...

...It's a busy life!!